Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert lamp and Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: and I'd like you to take a moment to just
Speaker 1: try and create. Try and imagine the most destructive disease possible.
Speaker 1: Imagine a disease that ravages the body. That ravage is
Speaker 1: just about every tissue, every every part of the human
Speaker 1: form that it takes down. The sex organs that that
Speaker 1: takes apart the face, takes apart your identity, and in
Speaker 1: some cases ultimately robbed you of your mind as well
Speaker 1: before killing you outright. Yeah, you mentioned sex organs. So
Speaker 1: also imagine that there's a moral to mention to this
Speaker 1: disease that would give you the sort of outward appearance
Speaker 1: that perhaps you had been engaging in conduct unbecoming to you. Yes,
Speaker 1: And of course, in all of this, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a very real ill this and that is syphilis. We're
Speaker 1: actually going to devote two whole episodes to syphilis here.
Speaker 1: This first episode, Syphilis the Great Imitator, is mainly going
Speaker 1: to focus on the organism that causes syphilis and how
Speaker 1: syphilis manifests itself in the human body. In the second episode,
Speaker 1: we are going to get into the cultural and historical
Speaker 1: impact of syphilis, because that that in its own right
Speaker 1: is an enormous topic of interest, because for four and
Speaker 1: a half centuries, syphilis ravages the Old World, ravages Western culture,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really kind of difficult to overstate the
Speaker 1: the role that syphilis played in coloring Western civilization during
Speaker 1: that time. Yes, don't run away, because this is alf
Speaker 1: really interesting that the bacterium itself is fascinating, and then
Speaker 1: of course the cultural implications. Now we have our first
Speaker 1: recorded epidemic of venereal syphilis occurring in Europe, and by
Speaker 1: the close of the fifteenth century you have chaos just
Speaker 1: raining in Naples, Italy, where there's a huge outbreak. In fact, uh,
Speaker 1: Pope Innocent the eighth asked French King Charles the Eighth
Speaker 1: to invade the city with troops to try to keep
Speaker 1: it under control. But what do you think happens? Well,
Speaker 1: as we would as we it would eventually learned, Sending
Speaker 1: troops then to deal with syphilis not the best strategy
Speaker 1: because because that they're going to end up catching the syphilis.
Speaker 1: And then when you draw the troops out, they're going
Speaker 1: to take the syphilis elsewhere exactly. And the problem here
Speaker 1: is that syphlis has being known as the great imitator
Speaker 1: because it has all these different symptoms that at the
Speaker 1: outset might be mistaken for other illnesses. So imagine this
Speaker 1: time period in which this was happening and people not
Speaker 1: quite knowing what they were dealing with. Yeah, to quote
Speaker 1: Sir William Afler, he says, no syphilis in all its
Speaker 1: manifestations and relations and all other things clinical will be
Speaker 1: added to you. There is no organ in the body,
Speaker 1: nor any tissue in the organs, which syphilis does not invade.
Speaker 1: And it is therefore manifestly difficult to speak, at least
Speaker 1: at all concisely of the pathology of the disease, just
Speaker 1: as as it is almost impossible to describe its clinical
Speaker 1: symptoms without mentioning almost every symptom of every known disease.
Speaker 1: And these symptoms are not going to be the same
Speaker 1: from one person to the next. So you have a
Speaker 1: disease that is that is seemingly very stealthy, very nefarious.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's it's changing its shape, it's changing its strategy,
Speaker 1: it's going dormant it's popping back up and uh and
Speaker 1: the whole time everyone's trying to understand what's going on,
Speaker 1: how to prevent it. Uh. Again, there there's there's this
Speaker 1: this whole seemingly moral side to it because it's spread
Speaker 1: through sexual contact, and it ends up spreading across every
Speaker 1: social level in society. Uh. It's it's a disease that
Speaker 1: ravages the poor, it ravages the rich. It's hitting the royalty,
Speaker 1: it's hitting the clergy, it's hitting anyone who's engaging in
Speaker 1: sexual contact, which is everyone, right, And in fact, it
Speaker 1: is so prevalent that you get a couple of references
Speaker 1: to it in Shakespeare's works like pox of your houses
Speaker 1: and Romeo a nguliet, which is now a curse like
Speaker 1: a pox on you. It's but the problem with this is
Speaker 1: is that we tend to think of it as this
Speaker 1: antiquated illness, right, it is not. In fact, The Centers
Speaker 1: for Disease Control estimate that annually more than fifty five
Speaker 1: people in the US get new syphilis infections, and during
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve there were more than forty nine
Speaker 1: thousand reported new cases of syphilis, compared to forty thousand
Speaker 1: estimated new diagnosis of HIV. So it is still present
Speaker 1: and it is most common in people between the ages
Speaker 1: of twenty and twenty nine years of age, which has
Speaker 1: led it to be called Cupid's disease by the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course, one other way we should mention that
Speaker 1: you can transfer syphilis is through an unborn child, and
Speaker 1: so congenital syphilis, which will we'll talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit more later. That's also a huge problem because when
Speaker 1: the syphilis manifests in a newborn child, uh, the the
Speaker 1: the effects are kind it can be pretty disastrous. So
Speaker 1: once against syphilis, even though it is a tremendous interest
Speaker 1: from a historical standpoint, it is not a purely historical disease.
Speaker 1: Now we just don't put as much emphasis on it
Speaker 1: these days in terms of infectious diseases because it can
Speaker 1: be controlled by penicillin, and we'll talk about that later. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they can be wiped out by penicillin and uh uh.
Speaker 1: And and that has been a huge advantage in the
Speaker 1: war against cephalis for sure, But still it is it
Speaker 1: is an adversary that that carries on even in the
Speaker 1: advent of what would seem a magic bullet. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: let's talk about this dastardly organism also known as Treponema palladum. Yes,
Speaker 1: such Treponema palladum, which is a treponemal disease. There are
Speaker 1: other treponemal diseases which will get into these and co
Speaker 1: include a visual penta and yaws. None of these, of
Speaker 1: course are sexually transmitted, but they are essentially skin ailments
Speaker 1: that are that are transferred by skin to skin contact. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they are related to Treponema palladum, but they themselves,
Speaker 1: as you say, are not spread through sexual contact. And
Speaker 1: I should add to to be clear if you want
Speaker 1: to get really particular. Syphilis is caused by a subspecies
Speaker 1: of Treponema palladum, essentially Treponema paladum palatum. But for all
Speaker 1: intents and references going forward, Treponema palladum ke palatum syphilis.
Speaker 1: You'll know what we're talking about. Yeah, Now, this is
Speaker 1: a spial shaped bacterium also known as a sparrow keet
Speaker 1: and that we're talking about slender, spirally undulating bacteria here
Speaker 1: and again. It is most often spread by sexual contact,
Speaker 1: and the disease occurs in three primary stages. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that. And uh, now, these these later stages
Speaker 1: that will discuss are not so common in our modern era, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because the later stages obviously deal with a case of
Speaker 1: syphilis that has not been treated, not been cured with
Speaker 1: the penicillin. All right, Well, let's let's start with transmission.
Speaker 1: And I'd like to sort of encourage you to think
Speaker 1: throughout this with an invasion. Sorry, all right, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about how syphilis is transmitted. And I'd like
Speaker 1: you to think about this, uh in terms of an invasion,
Speaker 1: because that's what it is. And we're dealing with an
Speaker 1: invasion of these spiral keets into the human body. And
Speaker 1: this invasion takes place in a few different phases. So
Speaker 1: syphilis can be spread again by through the through the birthless,
Speaker 1: sent by kissing, close contact, um, transfusion of fresh human blood.
Speaker 1: But the main ways that it's that it's spreading us
Speaker 1: through sexual contact. We're talking vaginal sex, oral sex, anal
Speaker 1: sex um. All of these will serve as as a
Speaker 1: as an entry point. Now, the way that the spiro
Speaker 1: keets into the body they enter through the skin, and
Speaker 1: when intimate contact of this nature is made that is
Speaker 1: when when the spire key enters the body, enters through
Speaker 1: the skin and there it will hang out until it
Speaker 1: makes itself known in the form of a syphilitic sore,
Speaker 1: also known as a shanker. And shankers occur mainly on
Speaker 1: external genitals that jina anus or in the rectum. They
Speaker 1: can also occur on the lips and in the mouth.
Speaker 1: So this is when you see most of the transmission
Speaker 1: occur among people when these sores are present. Right, this
Speaker 1: is primary syphilis. This is first stage syphilis. And think
Speaker 1: of this in terms of the enemy initially getting into
Speaker 1: the fortress. This is the shanker is literally the entry
Speaker 1: point for the for the spiro keets. And it may
Speaker 1: be a small number of spire keets and maybe a
Speaker 1: larger number of spire keets, but this is where they're
Speaker 1: getting in. This is the whole in the fortress wall. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And these shankers can appear usually around twenty one days
Speaker 1: after infection, but sometimes as little as ten or even
Speaker 1: ninety days. Yeah, and it may hang around for three
Speaker 1: to six weeks. And here's the thing. They can if
Speaker 1: you look up pictures online and sure, you should definitely
Speaker 1: go into a Google image search for for what these
Speaker 1: look like? Your loins, your your loins, but they may
Speaker 1: look pretty intense at times, but these are painless, uh,
Speaker 1: And they're easily confused with any number of small skin
Speaker 1: ailments that may pop up in even a healthy person's life,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff like ingrown hairs or or you know,
Speaker 1: or various other bumps. So then would be caused by
Speaker 1: by any number of other ailments. Again, it's a great
Speaker 1: imitator right now. If you do not get treated at
Speaker 1: this point, well then it gets into secondary syphilis. And
Speaker 1: during this stage that's when you see those skin rashes,
Speaker 1: swords in your mouth. And so that's the primary stage
Speaker 1: and the and it's key to note here that the
Speaker 1: shanker disappears advantishes. So if you were concerned about it,
Speaker 1: if you really, I wonder what this painless, you know,
Speaker 1: ugly spot on my genitals is, well, then it goes away.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the day dangers that we see
Speaker 1: over and over again with syphilis is that the the
Speaker 1: infection seems to go away, the illness may seem to
Speaker 1: go away, but as we're about to learn, it does not.
Speaker 1: And again, imagine yourself in you know, the fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: If you have this and then that disappears and think, oh,
Speaker 1: everything is fine. I got upset over and over nothing,
Speaker 1: and maybe you didn't even notice. It's it's entirely likely
Speaker 1: that one wouldn't even notice that the shanker had popped up. Now,
Speaker 1: most likely you wouldn't have been treated at that point
Speaker 1: in time because there wasn't anything necessarily to treat you
Speaker 1: with that was really effective. So it would then develop
Speaker 1: into a secondary stage called secondary syphilis, in which you
Speaker 1: would have skin rashes and or source in your mouth
Speaker 1: vagina and anus, often called mucus membrane lesions. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you may also see other varying symptoms such as fever, lethargy, headaches,
Speaker 1: general body aches, hair loss. And this is the point
Speaker 1: of the invasion in which the enemy, the me made
Speaker 1: it in in the primary stage and in secondary syphilis,
Speaker 1: the enemy has spread throughout the castle, all right, and
Speaker 1: and is making itself known throughout the invaded city, that
Speaker 1: is the human body, right, And you are highly contagious
Speaker 1: at this point. In fact, gentle, those sours caused by
Speaker 1: syphilis make it a lot easier to transmit and acquire
Speaker 1: things like HIV infection. Right, so you can get a
Speaker 1: secondary infection at this point. In fact, there is an
Speaker 1: estimated two to fivefold increased risk of acquiring HIV if
Speaker 1: you're exposed to infection when syphilis is present in these
Speaker 1: first and second stages. Now, at this point, after secondary syphilis,
Speaker 1: and here again we see that the secondary syphilis, this
Speaker 1: outbreak cut period, this goes away as well, which again
Speaker 1: could lead someone to say, well, that was horrible, and
Speaker 1: maybe they may not even realize that it was connected
Speaker 1: to the primaries outbreak, And they might, but they can
Speaker 1: easily imagine, well, I'm done with this now, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's done. It's finished. Whatever illness was affecting me,
Speaker 1: the pox has left me, right, Yeah, But little do
Speaker 1: they know that this is just the latent stage of
Speaker 1: this and it's just waiting around. It might not even
Speaker 1: reveal itself for decades. Yeah. So imagine the enemy has
Speaker 1: invaded the castle, They've made a lot of mischief, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly they seem to be gone, But they're not gone.
Speaker 1: There in the basement. They're in the basement, they're in
Speaker 1: there in every house in the city. There. They've literally
Speaker 1: become a part of the city. They're essentially a sleeper cell. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that is what latent syphilis is. Tertiary syphilis, the
Speaker 1: stage really is quite gruesome because it kind of takes
Speaker 1: everything in the body down to the studs are more so,
Speaker 1: I should say, it's like you say, the sleeper cells
Speaker 1: in the basements. They become stronger and they come roaring
Speaker 1: back into the body and they cause a lot of havoc. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, we see this over and over again
Speaker 1: with with syphilis, but it has such metaphorical power. Is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that I think we're aside from
Speaker 1: its uh, its power to harm and his figuous uh,
Speaker 1: the reason we're drawn to it so is you do
Speaker 1: see this idea of the the infection. It flared up,
Speaker 1: and it flared up again, and then it comes back
Speaker 1: in only fift The case is a much stronger form
Speaker 1: in the tertiary stage, far more debilitating, far more destructive
Speaker 1: and ultimately lethal stage of the illness. Yeah. In this
Speaker 1: late stage you could have sometimes that include difficulty coordinating
Speaker 1: your muscle movements, paralysis, not being able to move some
Speaker 1: of your body, uh, numbness, blindness, and dementia. And then
Speaker 1: in the late late stages, the disease begins to ravage
Speaker 1: your internal organs, and that is what can result in death.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the remarkable things about this
Speaker 1: is that this stage can occur ten to twenty years
Speaker 1: after primary syphilis. So this is it's again the metaphoralthorical
Speaker 1: power of this. It's like the the sins of the
Speaker 1: young individual coming back to destroy the older individual. You know.
Speaker 1: It's um, it's it's gruesome stuff, and and and and
Speaker 1: against that one may not even remember that first outbreak
Speaker 1: all that clearly, and suddenly all these changes are happening
Speaker 1: to their body and ultimately to their mind. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we have largely up until this point treated this in
Speaker 1: a very clinical fashion and not really talked about the
Speaker 1: sights and the sounds and the spells of what this
Speaker 1: looks like, which you will do more in the next podcast.
Speaker 1: But just know that at this point, um, this this
Speaker 1: this is really adding injury to insult because you might
Speaker 1: have lost your nose, you know, and recovered from that,
Speaker 1: and and all of a sudden you think you're out
Speaker 1: in the clear, and boom it comes back in in
Speaker 1: such a corrosive manner that you find out that this
Speaker 1: is really the death knell. Yeah, corrosive is an excellent
Speaker 1: term to use, because you see the you see a
Speaker 1: loss of teeth, you see the destruction of the palette
Speaker 1: in the mouth. You see you see the the the
Speaker 1: collapse of the nose into what is known as saddle nose,
Speaker 1: where basically the nose collapses and around the bridge and
Speaker 1: becomes kind of upturned and smaller looking uh, and then
Speaker 1: may eventually um appear to rot entirely. Uh. Saddle nose
Speaker 1: is also caused can also be caused by just damage
Speaker 1: to the nose. You see boxers that suffer from saddle nose.
Speaker 1: Also extreme cocaine addiction can somehow sometimes have that effect
Speaker 1: on individuals. But Yeah, you're seeing it attack your facial features.
Speaker 1: You're seeing it attack uh, your genitals in a very
Speaker 1: destructive manner, and then also getting into your organs. Again.
Speaker 1: To back to the quote that I read at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the podcast by uh Dr William Ostler, it
Speaker 1: it the spiral keets of syphilis attack every part of
Speaker 1: the body like nothing is off limits. To go back
Speaker 1: to that castle analogy from from earlier, the invader has
Speaker 1: lived in the city for ten to twenty years and
Speaker 1: now in potentially every household in the city has decided
Speaker 1: to just burn everything to the ground. Right now. The
Speaker 1: other part of this is that simple is as we
Speaker 1: have mentioned before, can be transmitted through the placenta. So
Speaker 1: what does this mean. It means that during that time
Speaker 1: period from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of children born with syphilis also called
Speaker 1: congenital syphilis. And even to this day, corner of the
Speaker 1: World Health Organization, you have a million children born annually
Speaker 1: with congenital syphilis. Yeah, and it's very serious stuff because
Speaker 1: nearly half of all children infected with syphilis, whether in
Speaker 1: the womb, guy shortly before or after birth, and sometimes
Speaker 1: this can also result in still borns um And despite
Speaker 1: the fact that syphilis can be cure with antbiotics if
Speaker 1: caught early, there are arising rates among pregnant women in
Speaker 1: the United States, and that of course has increased the
Speaker 1: number of infants born with this. Now, some of the
Speaker 1: complications include blindness, deafness, deformity of the face, and nervous
Speaker 1: system problems. Now, why does syphilis hang out in the
Speaker 1: body so long, you might be wondering, Well, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it maybe due in part to palladum having a slow
Speaker 1: dividing time of thirty to thirty three hours, and it's
Speaker 1: likely that P. Pallatum undergoes an even slower rate of
Speaker 1: division during the latent stages of the disease. So it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's a long living creature from a bacterial standpoint, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like a bacterial croc pot Yeah. Alright, um, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the current state of treatment and infections. Oh
Speaker 1: but I say current, I have to mention that there
Speaker 1: are a couple of old timey ways in which they
Speaker 1: were thought to be cures for it, one of which
Speaker 1: is mercury. Yes, inhaling mercury vapor. In fact, there is
Speaker 1: This was so common for hundreds of years that a
Speaker 1: little phrase came out of that, A night with venus,
Speaker 1: a lifetime with mercury. Yeah. So you would find yourself
Speaker 1: going regularly for essentially skin treatments, taking these these mercury
Speaker 1: steam bats, and and enduring the harmful effects of that
Speaker 1: of that mercury relation on top of the ravages of syphilis.
Speaker 1: It did kill the sparrow key, but yes, it also
Speaker 1: poisoned the patient. Yeah. Well, there are a few different
Speaker 1: factors involved. There because on one hand, uh, their you know,
Speaker 1: their arguments to what effect the mercury had in killing
Speaker 1: the sparrow keets, But then the sparrow keets are so
Speaker 1: entrenched in the body. What can you do. Also, again,
Speaker 1: think about that that primary and secondary stage, the flare
Speaker 1: ups and the disappearance. You have individuals that could go
Speaker 1: into it to be treated for for their symptoms of syphilis,
Speaker 1: and lo and behold, the symptoms vanish with the treatment,
Speaker 1: not because of the treatment, just because of the timing
Speaker 1: of the treatment. And ultimately, again you're dealing with four
Speaker 1: and a half centuries in which there is no cure
Speaker 1: for this illness. So if someone's trying to sell you
Speaker 1: an illness, you're going to try and buy it. That's
Speaker 1: just how it goes. And you know, this disease is
Speaker 1: ravaging my body. If you tell me that mercury might help,
Speaker 1: then I'm probably going to try mercury. Sure, You're gonna
Speaker 1: try anything at that point, including malaria, which is apparently
Speaker 1: something that was discovered in nineteen seventeen by Julius Wagner
Speaker 1: Jarig to help halt some of the symptoms of syphilis,
Speaker 1: particularly neurosyphilis that advanced stage in which you get psychosis
Speaker 1: and you get paralysis. And they found that if you
Speaker 1: induced a malarial fever in patients, well, that could help
Speaker 1: with the actual infection. You also saw the use of
Speaker 1: so called ciphilization treatments. This was where you would essentially
Speaker 1: try to inoculate the patient in the same way that
Speaker 1: you would treat them for smallpox. Um, this didn't work, uh,
Speaker 1: But submitting yourself to the disease right right, Yeah, trying
Speaker 1: to to build up you know, bodily immunity doesn't work. Now,
Speaker 1: I've I've read some mixed reports of how experiments on
Speaker 1: rabbits uh in the modern age have potentially shown some
Speaker 1: possibility there. But you get into a situation where it
Speaker 1: would take so many applications of syphilis and and we're
Speaker 1: talking about a rabbit and it hasn't been studied enough
Speaker 1: and you would certainly could not study it in humans.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, and then also want to study it
Speaker 1: when we have penicillin that can wipe it out. And
Speaker 1: sometimes it's diagnosed by testing fluid from a syphilis sore
Speaker 1: and looking for the sparrow keet via dark field microscopy.
Speaker 1: The name of that blood test by the way, is
Speaker 1: the Wasserman blood test uh and it was developed in
Speaker 1: nineteen o six just to get everything in the timeline
Speaker 1: squared away there. So, as we had mentioned, symphilis can
Speaker 1: be treated with antibotics, So we're talking about penicillin. We're
Speaker 1: talking about G benzotine, doxycycline, or tetracycline, and that's for
Speaker 1: patients who are usually allergic to penicillin. In the length
Speaker 1: of treatment depends on the extent of the infection and
Speaker 1: factors such as the person's overall health. So let's say
Speaker 1: you didn't get to it right away and you kind
Speaker 1: of get to the second or have a secondary phase
Speaker 1: of it, you would still have to deal with any
Speaker 1: sort of ill effects that you might have sustained at
Speaker 1: that point. All right, So at this point you might
Speaker 1: be wondering, what can I do two decrease my chances
Speaker 1: of catching syphilis. Well, according to the CDC, they're basically
Speaker 1: two things you can do because there's no there's no
Speaker 1: vaccine for syphilis. We have a cure for syphilis. But
Speaker 1: then again you get into the problem of detecting it,
Speaker 1: knowing to report it, etcetera um. And then even once
Speaker 1: you've treated syphilis. There's no undoing any damage that it's done. Um,
Speaker 1: So number one, be a part of a long term,
Speaker 1: mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested
Speaker 1: and it has negative STD test results. And number two
Speaker 1: use latex condoms the right way every time you have sex.
Speaker 1: Condoms prevent transmission of syphilis by preventing contact with a sore.
Speaker 1: Sometimes sores occurring areas not covered by a condom. However,
Speaker 1: in contact with these sores can still transmit syphilis because
Speaker 1: again it's about it. It's it come goes through the skin.
Speaker 1: It's not something that travels through the orifice. Now this
Speaker 1: might surprise you, but the people who really need to
Speaker 1: hear this most besides year olds, are senior citizens. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this surprised me. This was some some some interesting
Speaker 1: material that you discovered. Yeah, we actually a while ago
Speaker 1: we had someone from the CDC come and talk to
Speaker 1: us about STDs. Not because our our group needed a
Speaker 1: talking to because the outbreak at work right now, but
Speaker 1: because every once in a while someone will come and
Speaker 1: and sort of give us information and and um, it's
Speaker 1: always very interesting. And he had mentioned then that retirement communities,
Speaker 1: assisted living facilities these are all hotbeds for STDs, and
Speaker 1: this is in part because they are not practicing safe sex.
Speaker 1: And also you have to keep in mind that that
Speaker 1: for a long time, perhaps many of of the community
Speaker 1: members were in long term relationships, but now they probably
Speaker 1: have lost a partner. And it's a very social community.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of sex going on within your citizens
Speaker 1: in these communities, and numbers from the Centers for Disease
Speaker 1: Control and Prevention show a rapid increase among older people.
Speaker 1: Were talking about between two thousand and seven and two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, clamydia infections among Americans sixty five and
Speaker 1: over increased by and syphilis by fifty two percent. See,
Speaker 1: I just had I had no idea. I end up
Speaker 1: struggling to try and piece together, like a timeline for
Speaker 1: a hypothetical UH assisted living resident, how they acquire the
Speaker 1: syphilis and then how and then how they end up
Speaker 1: passing it on to multiple people in the facility. They
Speaker 1: just need to get the old posters, you know, in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties and put them back up, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that in the next episode. But there
Speaker 1: were definite campaigns, uh, you know, trying to get some
Speaker 1: sort of awareness going with Americans about s TDS. Indeed, yes,
Speaker 1: we'll get into all of that in our next episode
Speaker 1: titled Syphilis through the Ages. Alright, so there you have it, UH,
Speaker 1: A little introduction there to syphilis, to treponema palatum, to
Speaker 1: the spiral keet, and with what it does to the
Speaker 1: body as it invades and then sets sets up a
Speaker 1: residence and ultimately in some cases tears the body down.
Speaker 1: In our next episode we will get into all the
Speaker 1: cultural aspects of this, well maybe not all of them,
Speaker 1: but some of the high points for sure, the history
Speaker 1: of the disease in Western culture. UM, all of that.
Speaker 1: So do check that episode out. UM if you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this one. UH. In the meantime, be sure to head
Speaker 1: up stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is
Speaker 1: where you will find all of our podcast episodes are
Speaker 1: blog post our videos, links out to our various social
Speaker 1: media accounts and UH and when you do check out
Speaker 1: the podcast page for this episode. In the next cephilis episode,
Speaker 1: I'll include some links to some cool resources about syphilis,
Speaker 1: about the history of the illness, as well as links
Speaker 1: to various blog posts that we put together that deal
Speaker 1: with the topics. So you can see some of these
Speaker 1: posters that we're talking about, you can see some images
Speaker 1: of tertiary syphilis, etcetera. And after you've visit such to
Speaker 1: blow your Mind dot com and percolate on all of this,
Speaker 1: no doubt you'll have some thoughts that you want to
Speaker 1: share with us, and you can do that. And also
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention if you have personal accounts of
Speaker 1: STDs that you want to share, be assured that we
Speaker 1: will not share your name, that we will keep this confidential,
Speaker 1: so you can send your missive to us about this
Speaker 1: stuff at blow the Mind at house touff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it How stuff works dot com